


Mindfrag

by Bibliotecaria_D, Shibara



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-25
Updated: 2014-05-25
Packaged: 2018-01-26 10:50:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1685642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bibliotecaria_D/pseuds/Bibliotecaria_D, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shibara/pseuds/Shibara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Implosion is the process of destroying an object by collapsing or squeezing in on itself.  Unequal inward and outward forces result in the structure collapsing inward as the difference between lower internal pressure and higher external pressure reaches the implosion point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Mindfrag  
 **Authors:** Shibara, Bibliotecaria_D  
 **Warnings:** Coercion, violent and graphic consensual interfacing with very nonconsensual overtones, manipulation, stalking. And Ratchet. Read at your own risk, because you have been warned.  
 **Rating:** NC-17  
 **Continuity:** IDW  
 **Characters:** Prowl, Constructicons  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** “There needs to be more Prowl/Constructicon porn in the world” + realism.

 

**[* * * * *]**  
 **Part One**  
 **[* * * * *]**

In a sea of green, Prowl squirmed. 

Armored hands glided down the glass pane of the Autobot’s doors, making him tremble and groan. Apparently, windows were a very okay place to fondle, so at least one Constructicon was permanently glued to them. It was Mixmaster's turn this time. Doors perked up to demand more pressure when his fingers reached the lower edges, demanding they return for another swipe, and the eager, heavy frame draped over Prowl’s back obliged. Mixmaster was more than happy to oblige. Every wish was his command, and he waited for commands.

Another set of hands, possibly belonging to Long Haul but -- no, it must be Long Haul. His mental layout of current activities meant Long Haul was crouched at his side. Long Haul's hands mapped out the contours of the tactician’s midriff, large fingers gently tracing edges of panels and lights. Each time a thick, blunt tip slid over the smooth surface of glass or metal, they slid slightly from side to side just to catch on the edges in clicking taps that made Prowl twitch. He couldn't predict Long Haul's rhythm, and the tiny jolts of contact hitched his vents.

It made his systems seize. It made his body tense deep within, around whatever happened to be there. The satisfying fullness currently seated in him got the full benefit of those twitchy clenches, and Prowl bucked when Bonecrusher moved just right, withdrawing as he coiled tight, and the aching emptiness made the slow stretch all the sweeter when the Constructicon's hips pushed in again. The squeeze drew out a low grunt from the mech under him, Bonecrusher curling up to scrape his mask between Prowl’s doors and adding the sting of scratched metal to the crackling burn lighting under the metal Long Haul teased. 

That fire sizzled along nerve wires, licked heat up toward his doors, and pooled desire inside his port, slick and hot. The torturously languid surge and ebb of Bonecrusher working his port made that pool boil, but Prowl restrained himself. Patience, patience. The Constructicon would have taken him faster had he his hands free to control Prowl's hips, but a set of cuffs had them bound at the small of Bonecrusher's back. It put them both off balance, but not enough to stop moving. The small, frantic noises Bonecrusher made between grunts were worth the slow build for Prowl.

One white hand stopped playing with the helm between his legs and shot out to yank Scavenger downward off his self-appointed chevron-nuzzling task. There was only so much Autobot to go around, and the Constructicons had needed to get creative. Since Hook had growled when he'd tried to wriggle between them to mount up and ride, Scavenger had gone for the only other piece of sensitive equipment left. Prowl, however, was an expert at troop deployment. He could maneuver troops to best advantage anywhere he found himself. He had a task for the Constructicon.

He inflicted a kiss on the mech that couldn’t be described as anything other than ‘mauling.’ It had teeth, tongue, and enough biting to make Long Haul moan and wish for a mouth. Scavenger groaned a long note, a mouthful of fuel that tasted like Prowl dripping out between battered lips, and Mixmaster's hand shot over Prowl's shoulder to cup his teammate's jaw. The chemist’s thumb smeared the pink of energon down his face, a red flag of weakness or a badge if strength. Scavenger honestly couldn’t say which it was, anymore. 

The Autobot snarled and attacked the fuel, licking hard and deliberately forcing his tongue into Scavenger's split lip to suck and bite the energon straight from the source. Scavenger's groan became a shuddering series of gasps that stuttered out his open mouth as Prowl savaged his lower lip. When the kiss resumed, there was no more gentleness to it than there had been before, but Scavenger's hands rose to his own throat. Not to fight, no, but to cover the white hand holding him in place. They shook slightly as they pet that hand, almost reverent, definitely possessive, despite how Prowl's fingers dug into his unarmored throat in violent threat at the lingering touch. 

Their lips separated only to draw in great gulps of air, the choked panting of two frames close to system overheat. Fans whirred on high. Scavenger onlined his optics, unable to remember when he'd offlined them, and Prowl was _there_. The larger mech watched vaguely frowning blue optics flash unsteadily with unspent charge and stifled a moan. This time, he lunged forward against the hand on his throat, slamming his mouth into Prowl's. It got him an angry, muffled shout and a sharp bite to his tongue. It was worth it.

Crouched down on the berth between Bonecrusher's knees, Hook ignored the kiss in favor of his own work. Let Long Haul and Mixmaster stare, entranced. He trailed nibbles and kisses up and down the inside of Prowl's thighs, tongue laving the opened gaps between pelvic armor and thighs. Prowl's position straddling Bonecrusher's hips left the Autobot's legs wide apart, lewdly displayed in a display Hook had to admire. 

The Autobot should have looked vulnerable surrounded and seated on them, but somehow he managed the aura of a commander. His interface equipment bare, thigh joints creaking faintly, he rode Bonecrusher in a lazy roll of hips. Bonecrusher thrust as best he could into Prowl's port, but the Constructicons’ heavy-hitter had no leverage with his hands bound under him like this. Hook could read his desperation in the shaking of Bonecrusher’s knees, the way his teammate chased Prowl’s rhythm. The squeezing, twitching bucks Long Haul coaxed from Prowl were erratic things that didn't come nearly often enough for the Constructicon under him.

Meanwhile, Hook concentrated on the Autobot’s joints, his tongue darting in to lick at sensor-laden wires tucked under the edges of thigh and pelvic armor. One white hand had Scavenger by the neck, but Prowl's other hand had Hook tamed to compliance. The crane’s line had been unspooled early on, and even now it was wound around one fist. Prowl played with it, thumb fondling it distractedly. The subtle tugs as frames rocked and twisted sent vibrations down Hook’s whole body, and he had to bury his face into Prowl's thigh to hide the soft shapes of unspoken pleas ready on his lips when the mech he worshiped with his mouth suddenly rose up.

Up on his knees, Prowl rocked his hips in a quick circle before sinking down again, glacially slow. Hook watched the port right in front of his visor take Bonecrusher down to the hilt, and a few words might have escaped in a breathy moan as Prowl ground hard against the base, too-large equipment swallowed down. The quiet shriek of damaged interior walls only got louder when Prowl repeated the move, but the Autobot certainly seemed to be enjoying himself. The idea that Prowl wanted Bonecrusher in all the way, that he welcomed the scrapes and stress from his port, made Hook dizzy as he imagined that constriction sliding down _him_ next.

Not that it was difficult to imagine with Bonecrusher's incoherent squeal of static illustrating how it felt. Hook's throat closed around a painful lump of lust, and he crouched down lower, at the mercy of the hand sliding up and down his crane arm. Prowl wouldn't grant him such mercy. As sensitized as he was at the moment, his sensors were confusing his equipment relay clusters, firing off across his nerve system at the lightest touch. It felt like Prowl had him in hand, jerking him with the cruelest of sadistic tugs while he writhed and loved the hand owning him, denying him, giving him exactly what he hadn't known he needed until that hand gave it to him. His vents sobbed, flipping open and shut in helpless little motions as he lapped messily between Prowl's legs. Thighs tensed around his helm as he lavished wet attention on the slick silver rim of the Autobot's port.

That port had Bonecrusher whimpering as it rode up and down him at an excruciatingly measured pace, a rhythm meant to break him in the best way, and Hook had to do something for the poor mech. He slid down lower, tongue trailing heat and charge down until it plunged into his teammate's exposed port. Bonecrusher's hips twisted up off the berth, and a hoarse, static-laden yell came from up the berth. Cuffed hands scrabbled, pinned underneath the pile, and Prowl's engine purred approval.

Approval of them. That was it, and the entire group groaned in concert, pleasure a quick stab through their sparks. 

This was all the Constructicons had wanted and needed since the first time they became Devastator with him. This, right here. Well, not exactly _this_ \-- they had a lot of options, what with having six mechs and creativity on their side -- but the general idea of this.

They wanted Prowl to control them. Desire crawled up the back of their spark chambers at the mere thought, and they had seen his mind. He gave orders, and they obeyed, flickers of charge running under their armor as he used them. They wanted him to use them, make them his own. Let them be his so he would be theirs, and they would do whatever he wanted in his name, just because he _demanded_ they do so. 

They wanted him, craved him as a void did substance, but above all, what they wanted was for Prowl to want _them_. They wanted him to feel what they felt, need them as they needed him. They wanted him to feel the empty space where they should be and draw them in to fill it. The shrill, high spike of pleasure as he looked upon them and was pleased lasted a seemingly eternal time. It wasn't everything, but it was something, and they soaked it up.

It rang in their sparks and minds and was, in a way, perfect.

Prowl demanded but responded beautifully. Forgive them if they extrapolated from his tactical skills on the battlefield, but berth skills weren't that much different. The mech was used to being in charge, snapping commands and adjusting according to what happened next, be that a shift in troop movement or Long Haul heaving Bonecrusher into a different position. Overheated and begging somewhere in the back of his vocalizer, Bonecrusher could barely keep his balance up on his knees. Prowl assessed his performance and denied the half-whimpered request to uncuff his wrists. Bonecrusher trembled as he resumed the slow, pumping rhythm of thrust and withdrawal, thrust and withdrawal, and the Autobot sneered up at him, engine whining, revving. 

One leg hooked over Bonecrusher's hip, slowing him further until the Constructicon wobbled, vents blasting on high and shaking so much his armor rattled. The heavy vibration channeled right into Prowl's port, and the Autobot groaned in pleasure right before hissing an order that turned their joints to melted rubber. Truth be told, any order from him did that. Even when the words came out ragged and fragmented under the clanging beat of metal-on-metal and strained grunts from Bonecrusher, they never forgot that Prowl was in charge. Perhaps they were hyperaware of the fact, then.

The Constructicons arranged themselves according to the tactician’s will, fanning lust and desire deep in their minds, bodies driven wild as he turned them into extensions of himself. His will. His orders. They acted and reacted on the whims of the smallest mech in their midst, and heady, drunken pleasure swelled up in their guts, coiled tightly in the tubing and pumps. The feeling of how much their obedience aroused him slid into them like they were spread open, eager and pleading for it, and their sparks spasmed in their chests as he took them for his own pleasure.

Overload echoed of combining, except this time Prowl wanted it. This time he not only enjoyed it but demanded it, dictated when and where it happened, and commanded how it ought to be. How they ought to be.

The sight of Prowl arching back in overload, doors fanned out on the berth and calculating optics finally blown white in nothing but the sensation of _them_ \-- that could fry a regular mech on the spot. Connected to him as they were, it magnified the experience into an indescribable wave of tripping breakers, clenching port walls, and the searing spurt of charge grounding deep within, ricocheting back and forth until Prowl's clenched jaw loosened for a single, sighing vent.

The Constructicons seized his overload with everything they had and wrung it dry, using it for their ends until they tipped over the edge, too. 

It was only to be expected. That was the way they operated.

 

  
 **[* * * * *]**

 

_[ **A/N - Bibliotecaria_D:** Shibara wrote a thing. She showed me the thing and smirked a lot. Smug emoticons everywhere. I started throwing things in her direction because I have an inability to not write everything and the kitchen sink into things given to me to edit. _

_Until the curtain rises next time, m’dears. And frag you anyway, Shibara.]_

 

\-----------------------------------


	2. Pt. 2

**Title:** Mindfrag  
 **Authors:** Shibara, Bibliotecaria_D  
 **Warnings:** Coercion, violent and graphic consensual interfacing with very nonconsensual overtones, manipulation, stalking. And Ratchet. Read at your own risk, because you have been warned.  
 **Rating:** NC-17  
 **Continuity:** IDW  
 **Characters:** Prowl, Constructicons  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** “There needs to be more Prowl/Constructicon porn in the world” + realism.  
 **[* * * * *]**  
 **Part Two**   
**[* * * * *]**

 

Prowl’s optics switched on with a sudden unhealthy brightness, the instant online of a mech who'd been in standby instead of recharge. He tried to focus his gaze on the ceiling and away from the images in his head, but it wasn't easy. The faint outline of doors sprawled across the ceiling, the shadows playing tricks, and he saw his own face relaxed in post-overload bliss. Which was impossible, of course, because there was no mirror above the berth he laid on, but the hazy pleasure buzzing in the back of his mind summoned vivid images from the...memory flux he'd woken from. 

Yes, a memory flux. The byproduct of recharge defragmenting, nothing more.

Prowl could only lie to himself so much. The vague sensation of a rust-eating grin radiated from the room next door, and he wanted to shovel his furious exhaustion on top of it until it smothered to death. Instead, he forced an ice-cold wall of disapproval between his tattered emotions and the opportunist glitches gloating over him, right before stomping on the gestalt bond. Let the Constructicons chew on that for the day. They had a tougher time handling being frozen out by a professional mien than him outright loathing them.

Primus smelt the fragging lot of them.

Prowl pressed his helm into the berth, inhaling until his ventilation system hurt. Grounding himself back in reality shouldn't be so difficult. Exhaling in a long, hot breath, he curled his hands into fists and tried to prepare for yet another day under-charged, fragmented, and just plain tired. His file trees were a disorganized mess after weeks of spotty defragmenting. His systems were badly maintained and pinging warnings at him, complaining that he'd been depriving them of downtime through his increasingly poor recharge habits. 

He realized he was watching the shadows on the ceiling again, except no shadows were black and white, much less shocking green and purple. Even as he thought it, the humming charge at the tips of his fingers flooded up his hands, down his forearms, and exploded in the forefront of his mind in a mental image that didn't belong to him, he didn't want it, _it wasn't his_.

For all that he starred in it. And it felt so, so real.

_He was pressed between two of them, optics switched off. He didn't know which ones they were, and it hardly mattered. All that mattered was the thick length pounding into him, and the tight, hot port gliding up and down him in a sucking, rippling pressure. They were switching between a slow, deliberate rhythm and a fast, urgent pace. Their perfect synchronization delighted Prowl, at least as much as he retained the ability to think about it outside of 'yes,' 'do that again,' and 'more, harder, **right there**.' The part of his mind that never gave up control, the battle computer, tracked the creaking sounds of joints flexing in time, the rattle of fans and the barely-sensed electric pulses surging across cables. The two Constructicons matched, systems in sync, and when they tipped over the edge, the charge tripped through his interfacing array in a shared jolt._

_He felt like he couldn’t tell which part of him was them, nor when they'd become him. As he overloaded hard between them, he decided it didn't matter._

He tore himself out of the waking dream with an effort that hurt. It had no more strength than a thought, but it was a thought floated through the teensy hole in the blockade Prowl had on the gestalt bond. It didn’t need to be strong. The thoughts lodged under the surface of his mind, camouflaged and waiting, and the subtle infiltration worked. As tired as he was, it didn't take much for him to mistake the Constructicons’ little fantasies for actual, relevant thoughts.

His tactical matrix gave data equal consideration until the information was assessed for use. That did Prowl absolutely no good in this situation. Mistaking the Constructicons' sick perversions for his own ideas was becoming disturbingly commonplace. There was nothing quite so wretchedly humiliating as being pinged by his battle computer to open a file only to find a detailed snippet of filthy, often vigorous interfacing.

The latest fantasy felt like it belonged to Long Haul. Prowl was getting depressingly good at telling what bit of sensation belonged to whom, and just the thought made his innermost energon curdle. He'd rather compile a Top Ten List of Megatron's favorite berth positions than be able to identify whose lustful scenarios were unfolding inside his helm. 

He had heard a human saying once: “Memory is like a muscle.”

Prowl had zero interest in how organic information storage worked, but he felt it applied to...this. The gestalt bond, or link, or whatever it was called. Not only because it had literal alien overtones, the gestalt stringing through his spark like grossly foreign organic muscle fiber through the metal of his body, but also because of the meaning: the more it was exercised, the stronger it got -- and the better he got at using it. Months of dealing with the gentle but persistent _tap-tap_ ping of five minds at the edge of his perception had given Prowl a crash course on gestalt handling. His ability to bear the Constructicons’ nonstop presence had increased as a result. It was a never-ending stream of silence flavored by voices not really there. 

_Yes, hello? We are here. Can you hear us? Hello? Talk to us, Prowl. We want to talk to you. Can you look this way? Can you feel this?_

_You’re there. We can feel you. We’re not leaving._

_You are one of us._

The gestalt felt like suddenly discovering a sensitive piece of kibble quivering where five minutes ago there had been smooth plating. It pulled at his attention, a constant draw requiring he notice it. Notice them. Eventually, however, he learned by experimentation how to tune it out. He ignored the whispers over his sensor grid and blocked out the ghost whispers talking in the back of his mind. He learned which 'muscles' -- foreign, intrusive, and a squeamish sense of _wrong_ twisted him up inside every time he used them -- he had to flex. It was slightly painful and tiresome, but it worked. He'd endure worse to be alone in his helm again.

Silence rang empty when he figured out the trick at last, new 'kibble' squeezed down until it was still and quiet. He had never been so relieved.

The Constructicons had not been as happy. They hadn't been happy at all. They had wailed and thrashed on the other end of the connection, sparks reaching out and minds redoubled their efforts to draw him in. The pressure on him had increased, mental and physical.

Their persistent invasion of his personal space had become more blatant, less amiable. They hadn't exactly been subtle before, but after he blocked them out, they were all over him as if to make up for the lack. The other Autobots had laughed behind his back at first, but soon enough the laughter turned somewhat uneasy. Hands reached for him, ran over him, memorized the curves and angles of his frame with greedy palms and sudden, poking fingers. They knew the taste of his chevron, took in the feel of his neck cabling in their mouths, stole a kiss while he shouted protest. They tried to cage him in, larger frames surrounding him, but their methods only worked briefly and relied on the element of surprise. Ambushes around corners and sneaking up behind him could only go so far before he started seeing them coming.

He could discourage unwanted physical attention much easier than mental pestering. Fighting was second nature after so long in war, and the Constructicons were reluctant to hurt him. He did not return that sentiment. They learned to be wary of him, wincing out his personal space when he tensed. Training them to respect his space boundaries required a few well-placed punches, an ever-expanding list of extremely painful pressure points that made even ridiculously amorous mechs yelp and flinch away, and a sense of timing in order to jab his elbow _just_ right. That, and keeping a ship-load of mechs between him and them. That definitely helped. 

Also Arcee. Arcee was the one person the Constructicons were woefully unprepared to deal with. To be fair, that was the state of most mechs, vehicles, buildings, and the majority of reality in relation to Arcee. The Constructicons picked fights with her -- both sides called it ‘sparring’ whenever somebody broke up the brawl -- but kept losing. Her ability to kick their afts five ways from Praxus was a wonderfully refreshing break, because she took it as a personal offense if they stopped mid-fight to wave in Prowl’s direction. He made a point of strolling by just to provoke such offenses. Vindictive or not, it got the Constructicons off his back for half a day while they repaired their wounds. 

Better yet, Arcee took seeking her out for matches as implicit permission to attack them whenever she got restless. She got restless a lot, perhaps because Prowl kept her on a short leash. Which was, perhaps, why he did it. If the Constructicons dared approach him while she was there, she lit up like a pyromaniac spotting a gasoline-soaked cotton ball roll toward an open flame. She couldn’t wait for the explosion. Most of the time, she couldn’t resist starting the fire herself.

Best of all, she knew exactly how Prowl used her, and she thought it was hilarious. She insisted her new code name was Buffer Zone. Demilitarized Zone might have been more appropriate. To help keep the peace, he approved her request to use her swords in her ‘sparring’ if the Constructicons came within arm’s reach of him. That might have been overkill, but he didn’t think there was such a thing when dealing with his 'fanclub issues,' as Arcee the DMZ liked to call it.

The problem being that this gestalt bond thing truly _was_ like a muscle. He couldn’t just assign a guard and forget about it. It was inside him, part of him, where Arcee couldn’t stand sentry. And, like a muscle, it relaxed if left alone. Its default state was fully open. Prowl had to remember to will his end closed, even if by the lightest of efforts. By now that effort barely required active thought, but there wasn’t a subroutine he could program to run while he recharged. At least, he hadn’t figured out a way to flex the thing shut on automatic yet, not that he didn’t try.

The point was, he couldn’t keep the connection closed if he wasn’t conscious to make the choice.

This was a gaping hole in his defenses, so of course the Constructicons dug into it with five pairs of hands and a grappling hook. Any weakness in the bristling cactus of personal space issues that was Prowl geared up against them had to be exploited. It might be the only opening they ever got.

They forced everything they could through.

_Heat saturated plating first, metal warming until armor baked. Then came the prickle of static over paint, green and purple and stinging as charge welled up in vast waves rising from deep within their chassis, near their sparks. He used his palm to measure the rising temperature as if it had to meet a certain standard before he’d let them move on. They waited on his decision. He’d decided to supervise this time, blue optics shaded dark as he watched. The heavy weight of his gaze had aroused them more than an expressionless observer had any right to._

_Regardless of how they should have reacted, what had actually happened was this: five mechs frozen, riding the brittle edge between disobedience and an overload so long in coming it would crash half of them. He’d riled them up simply by being present. This mid-frag inspection was almost enough to tip them over the edge despite explicit orders forbidding that very action. He gently slid a finger tip between the slats inside a shoulder vent, making Scavenger inhale sharply. The Constructicon jerked, and the other four whined pitiful protest as his hips slammed forward, pushing into Hook’s port. That shoved Hook’s face into Bonecrusher’s lap, causing the heavy-hitter to sit down abruptly and make Mixmaster shudder violently, clenching around Long Haul until the domino effect ended in Long Haul’s grunt._

_Buried fully in Hook, Scavenger shut off his visor and panted hoarsely. The others weren’t any better off. A second ago, they’d been holding back at the teasing cusp of overload, interface arrays bared and brushing ports and lips. Now Hook groaned around Bonecrusher, throat intake doing its involuntary magic around the thick tip jabbing into it, and Bonecrusher was making tiny, desperate sounds that were rapidly becoming familiar. The way he kept shifting had Mixmaster squirming, both of them trying to hold still and failing badly. Long Haul’s grunts had an alarmed tone to them as he clawed back from the edge but slid inevitably closer._

_Prowl stood back and let them attempt to recover. He had commanded them not to move. They’d delivered so far, even as he set about making them disobey. He’d see how long their obedience lasted_

Prowl pulled out of the daydream to the sound of his own fans whirring, this time. He gritted his teeth as he used the manual controls to shut them off. At some point during the fantasy, he’d thrown an arm over his optics, blocking out the light to immerse himself fully in the heat and slow crawl of charge seducing his subconscious one horrid dream at a time. He glared at the ceiling. There were no shadows.

Of course there weren’t. It was all in his head, after all.

While the grabby, rowdy, immature attention-seeking antics happened out in the open, the Constructicons were using a more subtle approach underneath. He’d seen in their heads. He knew what they were capable of. They weren’t sadists and murderers just because they knew which way to point a gun or enjoyed shooting mechs. They were some of the worst Decepticons because they knew how to make a wound, but they were what they were because they knew how to really make it _burn_.

Different sensations, but same goal: consume the sanity of their victim. Break down all resistance. Manipulate him into doing what they wanted, just to make the torment stop.

He’d had memory refluxes. He knew what they felt like, even what memories his mind sometimes twisted around to haunt his recharge with. These were not memory refluxes, no matter how stubbornly he insisted to himself that that’s all they were. The sights, the smells, even the taste of group orgies had begun playing behind his optics whenever he powered down, and those were not memories. They were lovingly assembled projections from perverted minds, constructed ‘memories’ and thoughts meant to drive him to distraction.

Prowl got up from the berth and stretched out, door hinges bending out and the transformation joints underneath extending up to straighten kinked cables. His back struts clinked as he squared his shoulders, trying to shake the tension out. 

Instead, the ache of stiffened mechanisms yanked a vivid, technicolor dream right into the front of his thoughts.

_His back arched in a tense bow, doors up to round off the curve. His helm rolled back as his hips rolled forward, and a spiteful smile flirted with his customary stern frown. Just because he could, he tugged the mouth around him up and away. A tinge of regret shot through him as the hot suction slid off him, but the rush of power he felt was ample compensation. The level of control he had over this mech was glorious, especially here and now. The Constructicon obeyed him, sinking further down under his hand, mouth opening to busy itself servicing him once more._

_Prowl let his helm tip back again, the snarl of his engine demanding more. He couldn’t quite remember which of the glitches knelt before him, elbows and knees tied. He could hear the twitching clicks of hands closing on air, but the mech had his face buried between Prowl’s thighs. That was plenty of surface contact. Hands were unnecessary._

_His engine revved, demanding faster, stronger, deeper, and his fingers found purchase between bowed helm and kibble. They dug in and raked down the cables and struts. When he brought his chin down, optics dark and hazily pleased as pressure built low, Prowl could see the way the mech’s own crane line had been used to tie him. Hook. The Constructicon lapping electricity and lubricant out of his port like a starving mech slurping energon was named Hook._

_His fingers dented metal. A muffled groan thrummed through his port and sent a thrill up Prowl’s back. His fingers dug under Hook’s armor harder._

Prowl dropped his doors hastily, snapping out of the stretch and resetting his optics repeatedly to clear his vision. His fans were spinning again. He let them. He needed the cool air, because his core temperature had spiked an absurd amount for the short time he’d been lost in the daydream.

Talk to Ratchet. He had to talk to Ratchet. Explaining what was _really_ going on would burn his pride like acid, because Ratchet had no patience for patients who knew what the problem was but didn’t actually ask for help. Maybe the medic would be able to help him, however, and that would be worth the flat, scornful glare when he called Ratchet and said something less vague than, “I am having mildly bothersome defrag refluxes.”

He’d tried that last time, keeping his voice level and tone bland. Ratchet had run an assessing look over him, pondered for a whole quarter of a second, and barked, “Deal with it.” 

He’d known Ratchet wouldn’t do anything for mere dreams. He’d known that phrasing his problem that way would be too vague, too annoying, to alarm the medic. Practically everyone had memory fluxes. After millions of years of war, the memories tossed up by the defrag process were anything but restful. The only real solution outside of therapy to sort out the initial trauma was to just…deal with it. Through violence, addiction, or whatever it took, the Autobot ranks had been dealing with it on their own for eons. 

It showed. What mechs called ‘quirks of personality’ these days probably would have qualified as insanity before the war. Debatably, there wasn’t a sane one in the bunch. Prowl hated the way he was pushed into joining the raving loonies by this -- this _attack_.

That’s what it was. The dreams were psychological warfare, and that was the hardest kind of assault to withstand. He felt like his sanity teetered on the brink of giving in and doing something incredibly crazy. He just couldn’t maintain the situation much longer. He was exhausted. His mind was a disorganized mess from weeks of being unable to shut down properly. His body wasn’t any better, systems spurred up into overheating night after night. He’d been unbearably tired for forever now, time stretching out into an endless series of nights where lying down on his berth inspired dread, where he tried to shut down into recharge and failed. 

Every morning, the zing of charge zipping through his systems startled him up from standby mode. He woke ready to overload, aching and loathing whatever weakness it was that made him susceptible to the images filling his mind. He wasn’t defragmenting a single file. His systems weren’t reaching a low enough activity level for self-maintenance. His mind and body were too hyped up for true recharge. He was just powering down into standby mode and powering up again when his mind relaxed enough to loosen the chokehold keeping the Constructicons from projecting. He relaxed, they projected through the open connection, and he jolted back into standby again. No real rest found him from night to morning.

What found him despite his attempts to hide or block them out were some spectacularly arousing dreams. That was the worst part. That’s what made the assaults effective. They _were_ arousing. Slag him to the Pit, they were magnificent. Even once he kicked the insidious tendrils of the gestalt out of his head upon waking, the memory of those dreams lingered throughout the day.

He had figured out early on that the different ‘taste’ to each Constructicon’s mind would have been off-putting if the glitches hadn’t had access to his own personal tastes to camouflage the dreams in. The chokehold loosened enough when he neared true recharge that they could tease out minor glimpses of what he liked, and they had vibrant imaginations and creative style on their side. They were more than happy to cater to his interests, and that was what the Constructicons dribbled through the bond at night. His mind provided the vital details, the bits and pieces that got him fired up, and they worked with that. 

The dreams were _his_ fantasies, unlocked from the vault such things were locked away in, and that twisted the knife of lust low and searing hot in his chassis. The waking dreams were those shameful, burning thoughts he’d envisioned for a split second before duty, reason, and common sense dismissed them to the gutter where filth belonged. Every mech had those thoughts. They were the thoughts that flashed by with that first impression of strong legs, broad shoulders, and mutual interest, and then reality intervened to squash even the idea of attraction in disgust.

Those ideas and thoughts should have stayed squashed, but the Constructicons wouldn’t leave him well enough alone. They seeped under the locked door to steal his subconscious’ desires, searched out what he enjoyed doing with other mechs, or the warm, wistful longing for what he wished he could do. They knit the threads of interfacing memory, wishful thinking, and buried fantasy together into something entirely different, something involving five green-and-purple evil slaggers he’d never touch that way. Any way, if he could help it.

But, oh. Oh, was it tempting. They’d found every one of his triggers and concocted ten different ways to pull each one.

_Spark chamber open, the energy could be felt radiating out. He could feel it against his face. The spark was so close. He’d never seen one this close before. It wasn’t something people did for casual interfacing. A mech opened his spark chamber for a medical exam or a trusted lover -- or on orders from someone holding power over him._

_This situation took a little from Column B, a little from Column C. It was definitely the control aspect that had Prowl’s engine purring a low, lustful rumble, but maybe that added to the lover aspect as well. He was certainly charged up over the open spark chamber cupped in his hands._

_Prowl’s thumbs played with the locking mechanism of the chamber for a while. Tiny noises slipped out in response to how hard he toyed, and he relished the way Scavenger jerked and shuddered in Mixmaster’s arms. Rubbing the pad of his thumbs down the inside of the chamber got a breathy, stuttering sound that wanted to be a moan but came out thin as a whimper. When he dipped his fingers through the outer corona of the spark itself, combing plasma tendrils out until they slipped free and tangled again, Scavenger bucked once, exhaling in a loud burst through every vent. The sound reminded Prowl of hearing someone take a punch, a stab, or even a gunshot: sudden, shocked, and just starting to register the impact._

_Mixmaster had just enough time to pin his teammate before Prowl’s fingers swept into the spark itself, fingertips wiggling gently against the elastic, molten core._

_This time, the reaction was instantaneous. Scavenger wailed and convulsed, fighting Mixmaster’s hold to push his chest further forward, encourage the light massage to become a heavy, kneading pressure. Prowl smiled and took his hand away, and the Constructicon slumped, steaming and shaking, interface panels long ago retracted and array ready for the taking any way the Autobot saw fit._

_Prowl ignored it and leaned closer. He’d always wanted to taste a spark, and this was the perfect opportunity. He waited for Scavenger to recover enough to notice the hot breaths exhaled into the bared interior of his spark chamber. Mixmaster’s optics were wide, awe and rampant arousal dripping lubricant down his own leg. He panted against the back of his teammate’s shoulder, no relief in sight for the tormented voyeur, but Scavenger **shrieked** at the long, leisurely drag of a tongue up one wandering tendril of plasma. With the utmost care, Prowl licked to the end and then turned his attention to the mechanisms of the spark chamber again despite how the spark writhed after him. He nibbled around the edges of the chamber and nipped at the lock, accidentally grazing a spitting ring of the spark itself as it pleaded for his mouth to return. His teeth crackled, lightning filling his mouth, and Mixmaster’s legs squeezed together as he watched. Scavenger just whimpered and shook, undone. _

_The others occupied themselves nearby. Prowl could hear the desperate clanging and see frantic motion from the corner of his optic when he came out of Scavenger’s chest to suck in cooler air. The squirming pile of Constructicons sent a wave of gratified smugness through him, chased by another wave of lust. The whole lot of them were overheated and fragging each other senseless in an attempt to relieve charge they weren’t even generating. Scavenger had his end of the bond blown wide open, every lick and stroke Prowl gave him broadcasting loud and clear. The rest of the gestalt drowned in his need._

_The sensation of a tongue on his own spark did feel rather nice. After a few seconds of enjoying the strange feeling, Prowl blocked his side of the bond, and ducked his head to lap roughly at the glowing core of Scavenger’s spark._

The waste-disposal rejects were finding desires Prowl hadn’t even known he had to make their fantasies, and he would dearly love to enact one or two. 

Just not with the Constructicons. _Never_ with them. He wouldn’t give them what they wanted, which was exactly that. Part of it was stubbornness, because he would not be defeated by their scheming. Some of it was intensely personal dislike of them and their minds. They weren’t people he’d ever consider interfacing with. 

The rest of it was staunch Autobot loyalty, because they were the antithesis to everything he believed in. Yes, despite the distrust and reproofs from Ultra Magnus, Optimus Prime, and everyone else who thought he’d gone too far, he did have strong moral beliefs, and those morals were Autobot. He did sometimes suspend his ethics over methodology in order to achieve a goal, but that was war. There was no end in this situation that he could use to justify the means.

He’d thought there was, originally. He’d thought there’d be terms. The Constructicons would set their terms, and he could justify meeting those terms in order to reach a compromise that he could live with. He’d been waiting for the voices that weren’t really there to offer him a deal.

_Combine with us, and we will let go._

_Leave the Autobots, come with us, and we’ll stop._

_Just give us a free-for-all night, and we’ll call it quits._

He had prepared for that, building strategies to work around and cheat his way through until he could find a way to solve the entire problem, but there hadn’t been any demands. The Constructicons’ whispers in the silence were suggestive, longing, and had no deals attached. Their propositions weren’t bargains. There were no ‘if this, then that’ attempts to bring him around to their way of thinking, or coax him to meet them halfway, or even the slightest hint of a compromise. 

He’d thought furiously about it, until one day he’d realized they didn’t need to make demands of any kind. Beneath their obnoxious, noisy cheerfulness, their grabby hands and endless fantasies, patience lurked. They had the patience of a gestalt that knew they’d eventually win. They’d get what they wanted no matter how he fought. This wasn’t a siege where he could ransom his peace of mind and get them to back off, which was what he’d assumed they’d intended. 

Someday, it would be too much. Too much tiredness, too much charge, too much stress. Just too much of everything forced into him by a nonstop internal war. Someday, he’d stop fighting. He’d stop being able to focus enough to close the bond. Someday, it would be over. They’d win. He’d come to them in the middle of the night and plead to be let into their room. If he surrendered before total exhaustion devoured his will, maybe he’d phrase it as a command, but one way or another? Prowl would come to them, and they would never let him go.

That knowledge ran under every thought they slipped into his mind, ever fantasy they projected. They had faith that they couldn’t lose because he couldn’t win. He _would_ give in. Their attack _would_ defeat him. 

And then? Then they’d give him everything. 

Everything he’d lived in his dreams would be transformed from fantasy into reality. That, and more. Interfacing was the lure, the machine-level primal urge they’d baited their trap with, but they planned to be so much more than some sort of harem. They’d be his frag toys, but they’d also be his thugs. They’d be his agents, tools, and ready fists against a post-war chaos that clearly needed Prowl to set it right. They could make that happen. They could bring about his plans -- together. Together, they could remake Cybertron according to his will, because Prowl _knew_ what to do. He had no doubt he knew best, and his utter certainty became theirs.

They would give him that, and everything else they were capable of. They would be his bodyguards, his build team, his unit, his harem. In return, he would be their mind, their tactician, their Autobot, theirs. They would make his cause their own, and he would _own_ them. They would force him to surrender in order to regain control.

In their sparks, it was that simple. It was a brutal truth they knew, and he could feel their certainty like a pillar of the universe in the back of his mind. He could feel it now, since the tiredness kept sapping the strength from the part of himself he had to flex to close the gestalt connection. He hissed a breath out, vents narrowed in rage, and threw up another cold wall of disdain between his emotions and their careful prodding. They withdrew, patiently waiting in the silence that wasn’t silent.

_You can hear us. We know you can. Talk to us, Prowl. We want to talk to you. We want **you**._

_We want you as we’ve wanted little else in this war, and we will have you._

_We won’t stop until you are ours._

Their victory was as unavoidable as the frustrated arousal he’d suffer tomorrow morning, and the morning after that. They’d set a chain of events in motion, and their simple plan had the Autobot’s greatest tactician backed into a corner with no escape.

He could almost admire that.

 

**[* * * * *]**

 

_[_

]


	3. Pt. 3

**Title:** Mindfrag  
 **Authors:** Shibara, Bibliotecaria_D  
 **Warnings:** Coercion, violent and graphic consensual interfacing with very nonconsensual overtones, manipulation, stalking. And Ratchet. Read at your own risk, because you have been warned.  
 **Rating:** NC-17  
 **Continuity:** IDW  
 **Characters:** Prowl, Constructicons  
 **Disclaimer:** The theatre doesn’t own the script or actors, nor does it make a profit from the play.  
 **Motivation (Prompt):** “There needs to be more Prowl/Constructicon porn in the world” + realism.  
 **[* * * * *]**  
 **Part Three**   
**[* * * * *]**

By the time Prowl cut the comm. line to the _Lost Light_ , his burden of worries had been lightened only a bare smidgeon. While he was less anxious about the immediate survival of his sanity, it’d come at the cost of humiliation, ridicule, and a heap of guilt. Typical patient care from Ratchet, at least when the patient was an idiot. Normally, Prowl’s rank would have muted Ratchet’s ire down to angry glares and the occasional sarcastic comment, but apparently the medic’s time under Rodimus’ command had taught him that the command structure was scrap, rank was scrap, and respecting patients who got themselves scrapped was a waste of valuable time. He’d treat them all like scrap until they stopped being morons, even if he had to kick the stupid scrap out of them. He was sick to death of his patients ending up in the scrapheap because they had scrap for brains, so _no more nice doctor._

The mech had turned a medical consultation into an exercise in profane language. He’d had no idea Ratchet had been holding back so much vitriol. As it was, it’d been made _excruciatingly_ clear that the medic now numbered Prowl among those idiots he didn’t trust to transform without fragging it up somehow. The explanation about what he’d known _but left out_ (that was the criminally mind-dead part, according to Ratchet) the previous time he’d sought Ratchet’s expertise had been as mortifying as he’d dreaded. It’d also been more obscene than he’d thought possible due to Ratchet losing his temper midway through. He’d have been impressed if he hadn’t been kind of offended by the foul words being flung through the screen at him. 

Worse, the medic’s outrage came in a two-step explosion after he’d had time to absorb Prowl’s full confession. Finding out he’d lied to put him a step from strangling the tactician through the screen via medic fu. Realizing how long Prowl had been ignoring the problem in hopes it would go away on its own, letting it build up unattended into this Luna 1-sized major medical issue…yeah, that hadn’t been pretty. Prowl had heard of but never actually seen someone literally expand in rage prior to Ratchet realizing what he’d done. Red and white plating had fluffed out, the medic’s optics blazed bright blue and white, and Prowl could have sworn he saw the fires of the Pit in the back of the medic’s mouth when the blistering tirade started.

Other than physically impossible suggestions for how to frag himself and several new and exciting rude nicknames, Ratchet’s ranting boiled down to variations on the same theme.

_’Has ignoring **ever** worked when it comes to sparks? Has ignoring a spark-based problem ever, in the history of malfunctioning mechanical equipment, **ever** up and gone away overnight just because you hope it will? The only solution ignoring a spark problem has ever produced is death. Got that, or do I need to write it in a memo and fire it off to the Department of Common Slagging Sense? You want to die just because you’re too embarrassed to scrape up the bearings to tell me the Constructicons are exploiting the gestalt link? Ignominious death by stupid, thoroughly deserved. If you die from this, I’ll use you as a case study for how to frag up. Do you understand how thoroughly you’ve replaced your helm with your aft? Do you? **Are you listening to me tell you how underclocked you are, afthead?!’**_

Prowl had discreetly checked that no one was eavesdropping and settled in to wait him out. The medic had needed to let off steam, and surely even Ratchet’s extensive vocabulary had limits.

The epithets had continued to fall down on him like scorching rain, however, and it’d seemed Ratchet would go on for several hours if allowed. Lacking any option other than hanging up -- not really an option since Prowl had dithered so long he didn’t have anyone else he could turn to for help -- the tactician had improvised a distraction. He’d started sharing details. A lot of them. In a way, he honestly hadn’t been able to stop himself once he’d opened his mouth, and he could almost justify the flood of information. Clearly every intimate detail of the vivid fantasies was necessary for an accurate prognosis, right?

After a short while, Ratchet’s ranting had slowed, then stopped, vocalizer clicking off as he listened. Anger turned into horrified awe the deeper into the Constructicons’ exquisitely crafted dreams Prowl got. The medic had to shout and wave his arms to break him out of the minor trance he’d fallen into just recalling whose hands had been on him, how every port felt different around him, how hard he could _bite_. 

Fortunately, Ratchet didn’t mention how Prowl’s fans had been whirring away. He might have been afraid the tactician would start talking again. Oversharing was an effective defensive tool, if a cheap one.

_Un_ fortunately, Ratchet had next to no knowledge on how exactly gestalt links worked. That killed Prowl's hopes of an external control on the bond, but he did confirm something that Prowl had already figured out himself: these weren’t memory refluxes. 

Memories were stored in clusters archived in a mech’s processor storage, subfiles organized by time stamp and cross-referenced by a tagging system that grew more complicated the older a mech got. Age imparted more experience, and the memory data trees grew longer and tagged other groups as those memories became associated by whatever trick of a mech’s mind made the thoughts collide. A strong memory recall generated a backflow where the main file and all its subfiles opened at once, bogging down processes and causing the stored data to temporarily take precedence over real-time input. A strong enough flashback could completely overwhelm sensor networks, inputting old information instead of registering new for the entire course of the memory playback. 

This left a mech’s networks, in Ratchet's technical lingo, completely fragged to the Pit and back as the flashback ended and a barrage of backdated data suddenly hit. Not to mention that suffering a flashback did a mech’s mind no good, because a memory that strong was usually traumatic in some way. The more it happened, the worse the effects were, and the more memory subfiles got tacked on as the associations with more recent events grew. That tangled things up further, making the initial processor freeze longer and scrambling the memory file clusters when they were abruptly terminated.

To prevent normal process errors from happening, defragmentation cycles were standard during recharge. Increased recharge was heavily prescribed to deal with the increased load from trauma by increasing defrag time. Memory fluxes were the natural response to a mech’s processor attempting to sort out memory clusters, test and separate particular tags, and generally try to prevent a processor crash when a recall hit so hard a mech had no choice but to pull up the memory. 

Four million years of war had left mechs with terrible memories lodged into every nook and cranny of their minds. If flashbacks paralyzed them every time something triggered a tag, they’d die. Memory fluxes were a necessary but taxing price to surviving instead of freezing up. Yet even thought they woke up screaming fifty times a night, they went through defragmentation cycles every night of recharge. They just didn't notice because the dreams took up their attention, memories rising to the surface of sleeping minds while the busywork went on deep in the files.

What Prowl was going through was different. Whereas a mech in recharge could wake up when the memory reflux tripped enough sensors, halting defrag, the projections from the Constructicons didn’t originate from the defragmenting process at all. They were foreign data that promptly engaged Prowl’s sensor networks the way a memory flux did, but instead of waking him, they preventing him from dropping into recharge in the first place. He spent the night in standby mode, reliving a memory he’d never lived.

That meant that not only was he not getting any defragmentation done, piling a disorganized hash of new memories cross-referenced to a series of experiences he hadn’t had until he’d dreamed them, but the frequent flashbacks he was having as a result were putting him at serious risk of damaging networking hardware.

The external source ruled out the more traditional ways of controlling refluxes, which focused on tweaking defragment parameters to cull tags off the traumatic memories. Isolate the memory, put the mech through therapy to learn how to avoid triggers, and usually the flashback frequency dropped. Since this was an ongoing psychological assault instead of past trauma, that wouldn’t work.

The best treatment Ratchet could think of was forcing defragmentation. They couldn’t block the gestalt connection, but if Prowl could stay in recharge, the projections would have no more power over him than a particularly strong memory flux. He might wake gasping on the brink of an overload, but that was a far cry from not being able to cycle down at all.

The question Prowl had was how to achieve this sought-after state of blissfully offline, because Primus knew he’d been trying. 

And that was why he’d called Ratchet at long last, because he’d been driven to wits’ end attempting to handle this himself. Ratchet had two ways to force defrag right off the top of his helm. The medic would research an actual solution now that he knew there was a problem ( _hint hint_ , idiot), but Prowl had options to ease the worst of this torment.

He had an ally, someone working to free him from the corner he’d been trapped in. That was more of a relief than Ratchet would ever know.

Prowl pushed back in the chair and rose, turning the treatments over in his head and considering how to implement them. Exhaustion, oddly enough, could work to his advantage right now. He just had to adjust some things.

He had to deplete his charge. Dumping charge triggered more stable recharging protocols, as his body automatically went into a lethargic state while building back up to normal. It hadn’t occurred to him to try because he’d been doing everything he could to ignore the arousal ramping his charge up. Attempting to disperse the excess charge had been his focus, not depleting it entirely. The Constructicons’ projected fantasies would have much less power over him if his body had to generate charge to climb back to normal functioning well before dreams of interfacing would be anything more than a pleasant background while he recharged. 

He also had to fill his fuel tanks before attempting recharge. Most mechs took their energon ration upon rising, using fuel processing to wake up. A full tank at the beginning of the night would kick his fuel processing plant into a slow overnight conversion instead. The larger workflow of bodily functions streaming through subconscious processes would usually leave fewer resources available for memory reflux generation. In his particular case, Ratchet theorized that the increased traffic would clog other data transfer processes. With any luck, his processor would be so distracted by his own internal activity that the glitches wouldn't be able to insert foreign data, and, even if they managed it, his processor might only divert a portion of its attention to the dreams instead of its entirety. That would allow a decent amount of defragmentation to continue on in the background.

Ratchet had prescribed a list of engex additives that would cause similar high-traffic effects as his fuel processing plant dealt with them. He’d have to experiment, but if he could balance the energon processing with charge depletion, he could perhaps get half a night of proper recharge. That was half a night more than he was currently getting. Neither of Ratchet’s suggestions solved the problem, but stopgate measures were better than nothing. At least he'd be more rested.

It wasn’t like he had anything left to try. His options were fight or surrender. That was it, seeing as he had delayed seeking help until he was light years away from a decent medical center, locked up in a spaceship with the group of sadistic cogsuckers bent on dissolving his brain module in a vicious cocktail of recharge deprivation and sexual fantasies. So he was slagging well going to do as the doctor ordered like a good patient, and maybe he’d scrape by a few more weeks, or however long it’d take Ratchet to solve this latest bout of idiocy.

At that point in summing up how much Prowl’s life sucked -- or, as Ratchet preferred to view it, how much Prowl had screwed himself over -- Ratchet had stopped. His optics had unfocused, and his face had slowly bunched into a look of grossed-out recollection. The mental images inflicted by overshare had come back to haunt him. 

He’d shuddered and logged off, but not before urging Prowl to inform Optimus Prime of his precarious state. 

Prowl dismissed Ratchet’s words from his mind. No, he certainly wouldn’t be doing that. It was unthinkable. Optimus Prime needed him at his side, and Prowl needed the Prime’s trust. That had already been shaken when the tactician’s role in Iacon’s destruction and Arcee’s assassinations had come to light. The mind-control excuse only went so far, and he was still gestalt-bound to the Constructicons. His allegiance to the Autobots and Optimus Prime specifically was in a delicate position. 

If the Prime found out the Constructicons were actively influencing his mind, Prowl would be demoted on the spot. No officer could be that compromised by enemy forces and hope to keep his rank. Prowl uneasily hoped medical privacy would keep Ratchet from going over his head on this. Depending on how betrayed Optimus Prime felt, he could be preemptively exiled from the faction or even put on trial for treason, regardless of what the Constructicons’ influence really consisted of or if the war was over. 

He had to deal with this on his own. 

Very well. He could do this. He had options, neither of which were an actual solution to the problem, but they’d have to do. They were symptom management. Temporary patch jobs over his weak spot until a permanent weld could be made.

He strode out into the hall, mind busy. His battle computer had reoriented, searching for new angles where there weren't any to find. It had to wade through unsorted tags and sensor caches saturated so badly that Prowl had to stop walking, one hand resting on the wall. His optics flickered offline for a moment. He had to stop information input somehow, even if from only one source. Every little bit helped.

He was just so _tired_.

_Amidst the loud noises, the panting and the short, repetitive cries forced out by the ringing clang of metal-on-metal, a minute sound caught his audios. Prowl pressed his chevron into the wall and bit his lower lip, attempting to eliminate at least part of the noise._

_That stopped the high-pitched yelps from his vocalizer, but strained vents still blasted noisy and rhythmic down on the back of his helm. The Constructicon hunched over him created a heavy barrier against the room behind them, and Prowl was so small in comparison that the mech nearly folded around him as he forced the Autobot’s face to the wall. He had one arm wrapped securely around the tactician’s waist, supporting most of his weight at the same time as he kept the smaller mech tight to his body. That support was necessary, considering what was happening down below the restraining arm._

_An amused sound came from the Constructicon on his knees, and Prowl’s vocalizer squeaked embarrassingly high when he was taken deep and sucked hard. Obviously, the noises were half the fun for the two mechs double-teaming him. A happy hum met the involuntary return of the gasps and shrill cries, and Prowl squirmed, desperately bucking his hips into the sweet vibration._

_Bucking that wasn’t allowed, as the hand around his waist slid lower to control his hips. Prowl’s back arched, and the Constructicon behind him took it as the invitation it was. He dropped his hips and thrust upward, increasing the pace long enough to delete any thought but the oncoming overload from the Autobot’s head. When he had Prowl’s full attention again, the Constructicon slowed again, going back to the satisfying counter-rhythm that tossed Prowl’s mind between the sharp, spiking pleasure of a mouth sloppily working him and the stressed, borderline pain of a port wrapped tight around equipment nearly incompatible with his frame size. The pumping slide grated on his interior walls, but the tongue circling his tip took the pain and sang it over his systems in knife-edge pleasure._

_The grunting from the Constructicon behind him picked up, and Prowl’s fans rattled in response to a swallow that did something that had to be illegal to him. His thighs jerked against the hands holding them open, and the clanking, whirring soundtrack of a thorough fragging in close quarters was almost enough to tip him over on its own. A thick haze flooded the tactician’s already fogged mind, pleasure-drugged and riding the building high of an overload so close he could taste it._

_But there, in the middle of it all, there was a tiny clear noise: **tink-tink-tink.**_

_Overwhelming sensory input wasn’t enough to shut off his battle computer. The deep bass rumbling of the engine behind him felt good, Primus did it feel good, but it couldn’t hide the strangely out-of-place sound. Prowl turned his head, trying to locate the source so he could go back to enjoying practically bouncing in a Constructicon’s lap._

_Ah, there. His wrists were tapping on the ventilation grate far over his head._

_Even as he put the niggling mystery to rest, the huge hand holding both of his comparatively small hands captive pushed them further up, stealing the meager support of his elbows and sending Prowl into a split second of panic as he fell forward. He’d have slammed his chevron into the wall if the arm around his waist hadn’t tightened, turning Prowl’s instinctive flail into a twisting thrash that -- oh, fragging **Pit**!_

_He groaned throatily, going limp. The mouth around him laughed, not bothering to withdraw in the slightest, and Prowl made that high-pitched cry they seemed to love drawing out of him. His hips jumped frantically as hard pressure turned to long, languid licks from root to tip. That demonically talented tongue was in no hurry to get him off._

_It was a perfect foil to the way he was now really was being bounced by the hulking frame filling his port. Every time the Constructicon behind him drove his hips upward, hard and fast, Prowl’s feet left the ground. Gravity slammed him right back down again, pressing his port rim flush to hip plating in a strong flash of charge that immediately raced up his back struts and knocked the top off his helm. He made a garbled moaning sound and banged his chevron against the wall, the pleasure driving him to incoherency._

_The tempo quickened, low grunts dropping to a continuous gravel growl, and the Constructicon kneeling at his feet switched from teasing licks to swallowing him down. Prowl stopped noticing the tiny noise of his wrists against the grate, along with everything else but the deeply satisfying sense of fullness, friction, and coiled pressure waiting to break. His legs quivered, shook, and abruptly stiffened. The shrill, short cries became a hoarse shout, and his vision whited out in the blinding surge of overload._

Desperation staggered him, his leg joints locking as charge burnt his nerve sensors on the very edge of overload. Prowl threw his ventilation system to full bore and clawed the connection closed, humiliation and the sudden rush of fight-or-flight response giving him the energy to shut the Constructicons out. He would _not_ spontaneously overload in the corridor. He would _not_. They did _not_ have that kind of power over him, and he would never lower his guard like that again. He utterly and completely refused. He was tired, not defeated, and he had options now if he could only last long enough to implement them.

His body throbbed. His port clenched, slick and achingly empty, and his thighs trembled with the need to thrust between readily parted lips into a wet, purring vacuum that’d suck him off in no time flat if he’d just --

_No._

Fury, not overload, lit his optics blue-white, and icy rage lashed through the hole nibbled in his control. The Constructicons withdrew. He could feel an instant of consternation on their end before he slammed the connection fully shut. They truly could not comprehend his resistance. There was no point to it, and the sheer hatred he blasted them with shocked them a bit. It baffled them why he wasn’t surrendering to the inevitable.

Focus! The gestalt’s bizarre disregard for his personal freedom didn’t matter. He’d spent enough time worrying about that. He had other concerns to move on to, things he could actually do something about. He needed to apply Ratchet’s recommendations, and apparently he needed to apply them immediately. 

First stage of treatment: charge depletion. That was fairly easy. He could go to the shooting range and engage his battle computer against some sniper-level target practice. After that, he could check the sparring roster and sign up for close combat against anyone who’d accept him as a partner. There should be plenty of takers. He had decent skill at hand-to-hand, but his value in battle had always come from hanging back and observing the situation, directing others instead of getting involved in the thick of things. The frontliners onboard would spring on the chance to pound him into the training rink mat.

Poor choice of wording there. Poor choice, and the false flashback looped through his mind once more. The jumbled mess of sensor feedback and image snapshots left his hands unsteady as he braced himself against the wall. His processor had no hope of sorting this out quickly, even with his battle computer treating it like the external assault it’d been. He just…he just had to focus. 

First stage: work himself to within an inch of collapse. Second stage: fill his fuel reservoir with as much energon as he could drink.

Maddening ghosts swept down his doors, echoes of hands fondling the hinges. They belonged to a memory that wasn’t real and wouldn’t ever _be_ real. His optics popped wide, and he pushed off the wall, hands splayed as if to fend off the foreign feel of electricity zapping through kibble he didn't even have. Charge sizzled at the base of his spark, ready and waiting for the next fantasy.

A surge of rage ignited that charge to an inferno. They were _attacking_ him. This was not seduction. They were breaking his mind and intentionally _damaging_ him. If it didn’t possibly mean his own death, he _would_ have invited himself into their room, commanded them to open their sparks chambers for him, and laughed as he closed his fists. The more this Pitslag insanity burrowed into his mind, the more tempting that thought became. The agony of destroying the gestalt might be worth tearing them to pieces. He wanted to _hurt_ them for this. He wanted them to _suffer_. 

Prowl's optics narrowed, and a smile colder than the emptiness of space curved his lips as his battle computer seized the fleeting thought.

Oh, but there was an angle available, wasn’t there. He’d been approaching Ratchet’s suggestions from such a limited viewpoint, and options opened up in front of him now. There were other ways to generate and lose charge, weren't there? He’d just needed to find the right mech. Or mechs, plural. He was rather inclined to seek quantity over quality, all of a sudden. That sounded delightful. Sadistically, spitefully delightful.

They wanted him to open up? Very well, he would. They’d stripped away his inhibitions for their own purposes, but he would do anything and everything to avoid caving in to the glitches’ wishes. They’d opened him up just in time for them to feel how the lust they lit could be quenched elsewhere. He could use his arousal to replace them, and in return for their fantasies, he would shove reality down their throats.

They would taste in his mouth the attention he paid to others, and it would taste like failure.

And he’d get that energon. Slag, he’d get some engex, if anyone had some high-grade they’d be willing to trade for a good hard frag. He'd drink it, fill his tanks to bursting, overload over and over until he stayed offline. He'd douse his battle computer with the fuel and set it on fire if it might give him a better chance at escaping this without giving those fender-eating fraggers what they wanted.

He would _never_ give in. He'd fight them, and he'd _hurt them back_. He'd found the way to get some decent recharge, defragmentation and all, and he'd choose the course of action that’d cause them the greatest amount of pain possible. Once he put it into action, literally getting some action, he'd wedge the gestalt connection as wide as it’d go. They’d choke on his pleasure, flavored by the roiling hatred they’d brought upon themselves, and he’d savor their helplessness. Because how exactly would they stop him? They couldn’t. 

His optics dimmed, and he pulled in a deep breath. His knees felt slightly rubbery, but he managed a fairly normal stride down the corridor. Another wash of foreign thoughts tried to trickle through the bond, and he blocked it viciously. Long Haul was creating a vastly detailed fantasy of licking his chevron, and his doors twitched up in disgust. 

“Prowl?” 

The tactician reset his optics, refocusing. He’d been concentrating on what he saw in his mind instead of what was in front of him.

Optimus Prime had turned the corner ahead of him, approaching him down the corridor. His leader studied him, optics concerned, and tilted his head. “Are you having trouble?” 

Prowl shook his helm, as much in denial as to clear his thoughts. “No, I am fine.”

“You sure?” asked Skyfire, who was right behind the Prime. “You were swaying a little just now.”

He hadn't seen him. He hadn't seen a shuttleformer in a narrow corridor. Prowl frowned at the static fuzzing around the edges of his vision and repeatedly refreshed the feed from his optics until they cleared. He would not lose control. Not here, not now, not ever. “I **said** , I am fine,” he snapped irritably. 

The two Autobots paused as they passed him, and he could feel their curiosity dip toward suspicion. 

He drew in a bracing breath and relaxed his doors, squaring his shoulders. He schooled his voice to firm dismissal instead of brittle exhaustion. “I am just tired.” 

“Just…tired.”

 

  
**[* * * * *]**  
END  
 **[* * * * *]**


End file.
